Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald is a blogger for the website Salon.com and a well-known critic of the Washington, D.C. Beltway establishment on both the liberal and conservative side. Prior to becoming a blogger for Salon, Greenwald was a constitutional law and civil rights attorney in New York. Greenwald is the author of two New York Times Bestsellers: How Would a Patriot Act? (May, 2006), A Tragic Legacy (June, 2007), as well as the book "Great American Hypocrites." Greenwald is famous for his lengthy polemical blog entries, as well as his scathing critiques of the mainstream media, United States foreign policy, legal and constitutional law issues, as well as government-sponsored manipulative propaganda and public relations efforts.

Ideology
In his own words, when asked about his ideology in an interview conducted by a reporter for The Atlantic, Greenwald stated,

I actually don't self-identify as a progressive or as any other political label, for exactly the reason you suggest. Those labels mean so many different things to so many different people that they are essentially impoverished of meaning. They're also used as crutches in lieu of substantive arguments; if you can successfully apply a bad label to someone, then you don't have do the work of disproving what they say, and can assume all sorts of things about them and their beliefs which aren't necessarily true (I'm guilty of using labels myself that way for others, though I make a concerted effort to avoid it). And accepting those labels for oneself can create tribal allegiances that can undermine objective, independent and honest analysis.

Ever since I began writing, people have applied a whole range of those labels to me, and I've never accepted or rejected any of them. I don't really care what labels are applied to me. I make my arguments and I'll let others decide in which category it places me. When I first began writing, I was always amazed how I automatically had the "liberal" or even "Far Left" label applied to me even though I was writing almost exclusively in opposition to Bush/Cheney lawlessness -- meaning in support of concepts such as due process, search warrants, the Geneva Conventions, the rule of law, refraining from attacking countries that hadn't attacked us and couldn't do so. It was bizarre to me that a belief in the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law was deemed Leftist; when did that happen? In reality, that label was applied to me because I was vehemently criticizing a Republican, "conservative" President; therefore, I was, by definition, a liberal or Leftist, regardless of what views I was actually advocating. Now that I spend substantial time criticizing Obama, I've had other labels applied to me. That's why I say: these labels are, at best, nothing more than tribal signifiers, and I don't really see much value in them."

Accomplishments
In March, 2009 Greenwald and Amy Goodman won the first annual Izzy Award by the Park Center for Independent Media, an award named after famed independent journalist I.F. "Izzy" Stone and devoted to rewarding excellence in independent journalism. The selection panel cited Greenwald's "Pathbreaking journalistic courage and persistence in confronting conventional wisdom, official deception and controversial issues."

External Resources

 * Blog"
 * Wikipedia Page"
 * on Twitter"
 * on Facebook"
 * on Huffington Post"
 * Adviser Cass Sunstein Debates Glenn Greenwald on FISA Vote, Executive Power and Prosecuting White House Officials for War Crimes"
 * Greenwald and Eliot Spitzer on the Gaza Flotilla"
 * on Bill Moyers Show"
 * Israeli flotilla attack: victimhood, aggression and tribalism"
 * Israeli propaganda shaped U.S. media coverage of the flotilla attack"
 * American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics"
 * Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok"
 * Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency"